Abbas: ‘Era of suicide attacks may be over’

Monday, May 30, 2005 |

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says the era of suicide bombings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may have come to an end. "I believe it is over," Abbas said in an interview on the American television network ABC. "We have started to deal with the culture of violence, we stopped the culture of violence and the Palestinian people have started looking at it as something that should be condemned and it should stop." He noted that there has been only one suicide bombing since the cease-fire was signed nearly four months ago. At the same time, Abbas warned that if the peace process does not yield results, "despair and loss of hope will come back and (bring) a return to the old ideas." It’s a milder way of issuing an old threat: give us everything we demand or we’ll bomb your buses and restaurants.

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